RAAF 79SQN Nav Hawk Flight around the South Island of New Zealand.

It’s amazing how quick time can go and one year ago the ASO team was in New Zealand covering “Wings Over Wanaka”. Much to our luck the Royal Australian Air Force had sent over some Hawks from 79Squadron based at RAAF Pearce WA.

After catching up with the team we talked about how to best capture this rare time in New Zealand, they told us about a nav flight all around the South Island taking in the sites from the take off at Queenstown then fly down a path that covers Kingston,Fairlight,Garston,Nokomai,Parawa,Mossburn,The Key,Whare Creek,Manapouri,Lake Manapouri,Doubtful Sound,Secretary Island,Bradshaw Sound, South Fiord,Lake Te Anau,Te Anau Downs,Lake Wakatipu and back to land at Queenstown. The flight is close to 500km and most of it is at low level or crossing mountain ranges at ridge height.

Part 1- Take off from Queenstown and down Lake Wakatipu.

Part 2- Straight over Kingston & Garston.

Part 3-Time to get into the mountains.

Part 4-Out along the coast then back into the mountains.

Part 5- Still in the mountains but about to get down low around Lake Wakatipu.

Part 6- Some very nice formation flying around the lake and Queenstown.

Part 7- Last lap around Queenstown and time to land.

So there you go close 500km low level around the south island of New Zealand in a Royal Australian Air Force Hawk.

Some more footage we can release is the flight back from Wanaka to Queenstown via the Crown Range which is very much like the Mach Loop in Wales.

ASO has to thank the team from 79 Squadron and the RAAF for this amazing chance to capture history as it happened.

About the author

Sometimes it can be a visit to see something you forgot you loved as a kid that can rekindle the love of aviation photography and for me it was going to Temora Aviation Museum back in 2008 to see how the CAC Sabre was going in it's rebuild. While I had been taking photos since 1988 at my 1st Airshow it was here that I first saw the CAC Sabre in flight. I knew that from this moment I had been missing the one thing that I loved being around as a kid and that was fast jets. If the Sabre was flying I would do my best to be there to capture every flight and from that years of hard work with maybe why to much passion has put me in a position to showcase the Royal Australian Air Force and it's fast jets to the public. I hope my work helps shows just how awesome aviation is to the next generation as well as capturing current events so that the men and women who serve the Defence Force now have something to look back on when their work is done. -Mark Jessop